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The word telegraph (from Ancient Greek: τῆλε 'at a distance' and γράφειν 'to write') was coined by the French inventor of the semaphore telegraph, Claude Chappe, who also coined the word semaphore. [2] A telegraph is a device for transmitting and receiving messages over long distances, i.e., for telegraphy.
The telegraph represented a disruptive innovation in the history of the United States from its invention in the 1830s onward by quickly becoming a vital part of the nation's communication infrastructure. Its relative importance declined with the spread of telephones in the 20th century.
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After establishing his reputation as a portrait painter, Morse, in his middle age, contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system based on European telegraphs.
The first commercial needle telegraph system and the most widely used of its type was the Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph, invented in 1837. The second category are armature systems, in which the current activates a telegraph sounder that makes a click; communication on this type of system relies on sending clicks in coded rhythmic patterns.
The patented invention proved lucrative and by 1851 telegraph lines in the United States spanned over 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometres). [13] Morse's most important technical contribution to this telegraph was the simple and highly efficient Morse Code , co-developed with Vail, which was an important advance over Wheatstone's more complicated ...
October 1872: Australia is linked to the world system by a submarine telegraph line between Darwin and the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). 1874: Thomas Edison sells his invention of quadruplex telegraph to Western Union for $10,000. It allows a total of four separate signals to be transmitted and received on a single wire at the same time (two ...
The one-needle telegraph proved highly successful on British railways, and 15,000 sets were still in use at the end of the nineteenth century. Some remained in service in the 1930s. [23] The Cooke and Wheatstone telegraph was largely confined to the United Kingdom and the British Empire. However, it was also used in Spain for a time. [24]
A restored Chappe telegraph in Marly-le-Roi. The Chappe telegraph was a French semaphore telegraph system invented by Claude Chappe in the early 1790s. The system was composed of towers placed every 5 to 15 kilometers. Coded messages were sent from tower to tower, with transmission being handled by tower operators using specially designed ...